


What We Saw from the Cheap Seats

by magpieee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Decisions???, Bisexuality, F/F, Friends to Loves, Friendship, Gay, Lesbian Character, M/M, Mildly Uncomfortable with the Specificity of this Tagging System, Music, Parents’ Expectations, Part-Vampire, Rebels Who Aren’t Really Rebels But Who Like to Think of Themselves as Rebels, Some In-Group Conflict (T-T), Truancy, Wizard Rock, breaking up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 05:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21368608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpieee/pseuds/magpieee
Summary: If skipping out on the first day of your seventh year to see the last Flitterbies concert sounds only moderately irresponsible, join Lucy Weasley and her friends.{ a coming of age story with 90s wizard rock, a part-vampire, and truancy }
Relationships: Audrey Weasley/Percy Weasley, Lucy Weasley/Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	What We Saw from the Cheap Seats

**LUCY**  
  
**  
**

**AUGUST 31  
  
— 9:31pm —**  
Lucy Weasley studies the ticket in her hand. It is a small rectangle of gilt-edged paper bearing her name, the date of purchase, and the concert’s start time:  
  
_THE FLITTERBIES  
Mon. Sept. 1  
Doors Open - 8:00pm  
Show - 9:00pm_  
  
If a breeze were to come through her bedroom’s open window, the wind would, realistically, blow the ticket away. But sitting in her palm like this, it feels as solid and weighty as a stone—one that can easily _break_ a window.  
  
Not that Lucy, the daughter of a Ministry official, and thus brought up to be fairly law-abiding, is in any way prone to damaging property. (Perhaps the closest she’s come to such anarchy happened when she was eleven and had inadvertently released all the frogs in the Magical Menagerie after an experimental swish of her new wand.) But on nights like these, when the world is so still and quiet, Lucy can feel her skin stretching against her anxious bones, she likes to fancy herself as quite capable of doing anything.  
  
The owl brought the ticket in a dark purple envelope. On the front, in the righthand corner, is a small drawing of a mouth that’s been magically animated to smile. When it does, it opens much wider than one anticipates, revealing pointed teeth. Nestled between them are letters spelling out “The Doxy Box.”  
  
Lucy remembers from Care of Magical Creatures that the doxy—that winged, eight-limbed creature—is sometimes mistaken for a fairy. She couldn’t see why, flipping back and forth between the moving photos in her creature guidebook while the professor segued into a lecture on augureys. Apart from having wings, the two hardly looked alike at all.  
  
Fairies were slender and elegant. The sinews in their wings caught the light like dewy spiderwebs, and their eyes resembled tiny obsidian rocks, completely black (this wasn’t a sinister feature, but one that accentuated their cold, refined beauty.) Doxies, however, were angular, darker. Their red eyes flashed like embers in the dark, their limbs were matted with coarse hair, and horns branched out from their foreheads like insect antennae. When they pulled their lips back into those mischievous grins—much like the drawing on the envelope, Lucy presently thinks—they bared rows and rows of teeth, every one of them needle-sharp and venomous.  
  
The Doxy Box seems like a fitting venue for the very last concert of the Flitterbies’ final tour. The first single they’d released back in the early nineties was “I’d Rather Be a Doxy,” a rush of adrenaline that hit Lucy like a thunderclap when she first heard it, studying in the Ravenclaw common room, a portable radio on her desk.  
  
Initially, Tchaikovsky was on, issuing from a Muggle station, but there was too much static (they never could get good reception, out in the Scottish country.) Lucy, who’d been close to passing out while laboring over a Transfiguration essay, twisted the knob. She searched through a seemingly endless scroll of staticstaticstatic—the twang of a guitar—staticstaticstatic.  
  
Lucy scrolled back, until the guitar returned. It was the wee hours of the morning, long before the sun would crack over the distant mountains and spill light like a runny egg, but listening to the song, the trio of female voices alternating between weariness and attitude, woke Lucy up in a much deeper sense.  
  
There’s a magic in discovering a song, entirely different from the spells she’d been writing about, the alchemy she’d learned. It is close to divine intervention. Even though her logical brain reasons that it’d been nothing more than pure coincidence, her heart clenches to feeling that, in that exact moment, the music had _found_ her, setting the air of the sleepy common room alive with its crackling energy.  
  
That song’s guitar is now playing on the old gramophone in her room. The Flitterbies’ debut album, _Hot-Blooded Harpy_, spins and spins, the needle skating on a nearly worn groove. Lucy has lowered the volume considerably so her father doesn’t object to it.  
  
_I got a bite, I got a temper,  
Strike my match and you’ll see,  
I’m a storm you can’t weather,  
I’m the queen doxy . . ._  
  
Lucy has never been to The Doxy Box. She’d never even heard of it before she noticed the ad for the concert in the _Daily Prophet_’s culture section. She imagines it’s the kind of place that attracts people with wild hair, interesting clothes, and loud voices.  
  
People not like her. Her own hair is a dull shade of brown, her shoes were selected by her mother, and she often speaks too quietly, not even noticing, until someone tells her to repeat herself.  
  
Lucy wants to be dangerous, but she’s too timid to even consider a different haircut. She wants to be defiant, but her father’s probably going to pressure her to take an internship at the Ministry. She wants to be uncompromising, but she keeps inventing boyfriends whenever relatives interrogate her about her love life.  
  
Lucy wants to be a rebel, but she isn’t even wearing shoes she picked out for herself.  
  
A knock startles her. “Lucy? Get some rest, love. Big day tomorrow.” Her father’s voice is a strange cross between paternal warmth and the insistent tone he uses at the office.  
  
“’Kay, Dad.” Lucy watches the two columns of shadow beneath her door disappear down the hall. She thinks, _Are rebels usually such agreeable children?_  
  
Lucy lifts the needle from the record and slips it back inside its cover. Scratches and scuffs mar the cardboard, but the band is clearly visible: a huddle of four girls, all of them artfully bedraggled, their arms laying over each other’s legs and their bodies slumped, as if they’d all collapsed from a marathon right before the photo was taken. The band’s front woman, Natty Atchison, wears a gauzy pair of wings, one of them slightly bent.  
  
Lucy slides the cover back into her small record collection. She puts the concert ticket back inside its envelope and tucks it away in a dresser.  
  
This time tomorrow, she’ll be at the _very last_ Flitterbies concert, watching them perform before they disband permanently.  
  
Tomorrow also happens to be the first day of her seventh year of schooling.  
  
Hogwarts will just have to wait.  
  
  
  
**SEPTEMBER 1  
  
— 8:02am —**  
“What are you going on about?” Percy stands in the kitchen with the _Prophet_ folded under an armpit. He’s a tall man, and faintly balding (although he will never accept this observation.) Right now, his puzzled look verges on disagreement. It’s the expression he always gets right before a debate.  
  
Lucy, who has been involved in many of those debates, is very determined to win this one. “Dad, this is my last year. You and Mum have seen me off to school _six times_ already.”  
  
“Yes. And?”  
  
“And it’s always the same ghastly experience.” Lucy throws her mother a look, perhaps expecting her to concur. But Audrey has simply paused in the middle of chewing toast. “We get shoved around by the crowd, harassed by the overworked, scarcely-tipped porters, and—and I barely even see you guys waving bye ’cause everyone’s rushing to get a bloody compartment—”  
  
“Lucy.”  
  
“A _free_ compartment.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I just don’t see why you have to come with me this time. If anything, I’m trying to save you from dealing with all that traffic. It’s self-sacrifice.”  
  
“It’s hyperbole,” Percy counters.  
  
“We never minded the traffic.” Audrey finally swallows, then delivers her empty plate and mug to the sink. “It’s really not as bad as you make it out to be.”  
  
Lucy frowns at the back of her mother’s head—then relents, spotting a few grey strands in Audrey’s otherwise dark hair. When did those get there? “Francis said his mum wouldn’t mind bringing me to King’s Cross. And you guys let Molly go to the station with Graham before.”  
  
Graham had been Molly’s boyfriend. He was all sensitive-boy appeal, but with little ambition, it seemed. They’ve since gone the way of many Hogwarts couples and split after graduation. Percy was predictably relieved; Graham, he’d decided, was just not _it_.  
  
“Not for her seventh year.” Percy sits at the kitchen table opposite Lucy, and snaps open the _Prophet_ to peruse the headlines.  
  
Lucy watches the moving photographs attached to today’s stories: a giant conference; Madam Malkin’s new line of formal robes; a recall on Fizzing Whizzbees that make one float _much_ higher than the advertised few inches. She thinks this is how she’ll always remember her father: with his face blocked by newsprint.  
  
He goes on. “This is very last-minute of you to even _suggest_, Lucy. I’ve already said I’d be coming in late at the office. And your mother’s cleared her morning.”  
  
“Not true,” Audrey corrects, enchanting a sponge to clean the dishes. “I haven’t cleared anything. Most of my clients have children of their own they’re seeing off today.”  
  
Lucy pushes the eggs around her plate with her fork. “Well, I’ve just remembered I left something at Francis’ house.”  
  
“Then tell him to bring it to the station,” says Percy.  
  
“I would. But—but it’s a really personal item, and I’d rather _I_ handle it.”  
  
Audrey levitates the dishes to their respective cabinets. “What is it?”  
  
“Really, must I have to share _every_ single detail with you two?” Lucy winces. It’s an outburst she didn’t mean to set loose. In its wake, a silence smothers the kitchen, heavy and tangible, like the sudden drop of a blanket—and then the world resumes, quietly. Audrey guides the cabinet doors close; they shut with a tiny _plunk_, instead of their usual clatter. Even the birds outside have gone from their melodious singing to just the intermittent whistle.  
  
Percy bends a corner of his newspaper with an index finger, so he can peer at his daughter. “You _are_ being honest?” It sounds more like a sentence than a question, as if he won’t allow any consideration of her lying.  
  
Lucy feels the concert ticket poke against her thigh. She’s shoved it deep in her pocket, and now it sticks into her skin like the nail of a finger. She shifts in her seat, fixing Percy with a look of confusion. “Of course I am. I just think—seeing as how I’m of age—I should have a little more privacy and independence.”  
  
Audrey chuckles. “You make this house sound like a surveillance state.”  
  
Percy is less amused. “What is it? Have the NEWTs got you jumpy?”  
  
“No, Dad—”  
  
“Because as long as you put in the work, there’s really no need to worry. You got excellent marks on your OWL exams.”  
  
“I’m not _jumpy_, Dad. I just want to go the station with Francis.”  
  
Percy raises a brow. “Are you two . . . dating?”  
  
Lucy chokes a bit on her eggs. “What? No. Why?”  
  
“Just occurred to me. Curiosity, I guess. I was under the impression that he’s—well—”  
  
Audrey cuts her husband a look. “Percy.”  
  
“What?” says Lucy. “Gay?”  
  
“Yes, that.” Percy turns a page.  
  
“It’s not a _bad word_, Dad. And it’s not my business to tell you. And anyway, it’s not a simple question of is-someone-gay-or-not. There _are_ other identities.” When Lucy talks about sexuality with her parents, she gets a weird feeling. It's like she’s on a stage and there’s a spotlight trained on her—and in the glare of its bright light, they’re beginning to think about _her_ sexuality: the lack of boys she’s brought up, the way she skirts around or ignores questions. Uncomfortable, Lucy tries to end the subject. “It’s—it’s a spectrum.”  
  
“Yes,” says Percy. “I read all about the spectrum.”  
  
Audrey scoffs. “Sure you have.”  
  
“We’re just friends, anyway.” Lucy crosses her arms. “If you really must know . . . His mum wants to talk to me about a job offer, for after I graduate. In the Improper Use of Magic Office.”  
  
Lucy gets a sudden itch on her nose. It makes her think of _Pinocchio_, one of the stories her nan read to her and Molly during their nights at the Burrow. They’d grown sick of _Tales of Beetle the Bard_ and _The Littlest Witch Who Lived in the Wood_, and Grandad (who always relished the opportunity to bring out Muggle items) carried in a crate of unfamiliar children’s books.  
  
Right now, she tries to ignore the itch.  
  
Francis’ mother Marion _is_ commander-in-chief of the Improper Use of Magic Office, but there is no “job offer” for them to talk about.  
  
In fact, Lucy depends on Marion _not_ bringing Francis to the station. She and Cal are meeting at his place because (according to Francis) the Department Head is so intent on working his mother to the bone, she’d have Marion clock in during the apocalypse.  
  
Which means Marion will leave Francis to get to Platform 9 3/4 by himself. No supervision.  
  
Lucy waits to see how this line will fare. She imagines it swishing around in her father’s head, as though he were assessing the taste of a wine.  
  
“Marion Dorsey?” Percy raises a brow. “Hmm. What, as a—?”  
  
“An assistant. Her assistant.”  
  
Percy absorbs this. “She does seem rather all over the place.”  
  
“So that’s why you’ve been acting _jumpy_.” Audrey flashes her daughter a conspiratorial smile. “Afraid your father would find out you don’t want to work in his department? Magical transportation just doesn’t interest you?” Though she’s talking to Lucy, Audrey watches her husband; she’s trying to provoke him. “You’d rather work in law enforcement? _The more exciting stuff?_”  
  
Lucy is reminded of when Molly still lived at home. All three of them would try to goad Percy to a reaction in the next room, quietly giggling amongst each other. _“Oh, the Irish National have lost_ another match? _Surely they won’t qualify for the World Cup.”_ _“Quigley’s has stopped selling those quills with extra grip?! Dad will be so disappointed!"_ _“Graham has proposed to you, Molly? And you said yes?! No, of course, you’re not too young for marriage! What fun!”_  
  
Now, though, it feels completely wrong.  
  
Lucy shrugs. “I guess I just didn’t know how to tell you, Dad . . .”  
  
“Lucy, for Merlin’s sake, I’m not Voldemort.” Percy sets his paper down on the table, really looking at her now. Lucy notes the twinkle in his eye, and the smile playing at his lips. “I’m thrilled you’re taking some initiative, ingratiating yourself with superiors. It’s going to do you good in the long run.” He lets out a short, breathy chuckle. “And here I was, worried you weren’t thinking _enough_ about your future.”  
  
“I’m always thinking about it, Dad,” says Lucy. She thinks, _Not in the way you want me to._  
  
“Well. I should get going then. Should be able to get to the office before 9. Maybe around noon, I’ll pop down to Marion’s office and express my _own_ gratitude—”  
  
“Don’t,” Lucy interrupts. “It’s not concrete. We’ll just be talking it over. I don’t want her to think I’m overly eager or anything.”  
  
Audrey purses her lips. “Yes, I think you shouldn’t, Percy.”  
  
“Right.” Percy nods. “Well, if you do take the job, Lucy, you certainly have your work cut off for you. I hear their records room is a nightmare.”  
  
Audrey grabs the _Prophet_, rolls it up, and lightly swats Percy’s shoulder. “Don’t scare her. I’ve always told you, you really needn’t worry about Lucy. We’ve raised a good girl.” She winks at her daughter.  
  
Lucy allows herself to smile. “Good girl” recedes like an echo in her mind.  
  
  
  
**— 9:20am —**  
Lucy doesn’t expect to find Francis with red eyes and a puffy face. He sniffles as she brushes Floo powder from her jacket and pulls her luggage out of the fireplace, stepping into his home. Before she can say a single word, Francis quickly explains: “Allergies. Damn Floo powder. I'm okay."  
  
“Oh.” Lucy retracts the handle of her suitcase. _Does one usually sound so . . . morose when they’re experiencing allergies?_ “Has your mum gone?”  
  
“Yes. No one else is here.” Francis speaks quickly, sharply, barely meeting her eye. He’s shorter than her, of course, but he’s purposely keeping his head down, as if shielding how his face looks.  
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?”  
  
“Yes.” He breathes in rather noisily though his drippy nose. “I, erm, have to use the loo.” Frances crosses the living room and takes the stairs two at a time. After a short pause, there’s a click of a door shutting upstairs.  
  
Lucy wonders if she should follow. Is she being overly concerned? Maybe he’s just gone to take an allergy potion. Or maybe he’s having second thoughts . . .  
  
She walks through the quiet room, noting the houseplants that’ve withered, the green leeching from their tendrils. Sunlight filters through the cream-colored drapes, much stronger now, highlighting the dust that’s settled on the pictures on the mantlepiece.  
  
With her sleeve, Lucy wipes one of their surfaces, clearing out a little circle. Francis stands in Diagon Alley—he’s eleven here, Lucy presumes. Proudly, he holds out a cage housing a tawny owl. Then he startles and runs away, noticing a mob of frogs coming from the Magical Menagerie. Lucy chuckles. This was taken the day she’d met him. She thinks about the timeline of their friendship, how it stems from this moment in Francis’ life where he was interrupted by something foolish she’d done.  
  
Lucy stops smiling. Attending the Flitterbies concert today is _her_ idea. She realizes that she’s cutting into Francis’ life with yet another, even more severe act of stupidity. Guilt squeezes her chest. Maybe this time, she’s _ruining_ his life.  
  
The fireplace roars to life with a burst of green flames. Lucy leaps back, gasping, then feels for her eyebrows to make sure they're still there.  
  
“What kind of seedy place is The Doxy Box?” Calliope, or Cal, materializes from the dying fire. She brushes the Floo and ash from her black curls, straightens her jean jacket—and trips. Lucy is quick to catch her. She feels Cal’s breath on her cheek as she snickers and curses her clumsiness. Her fingers linger on Lucy’s wrists until she’s properly righted herself.  
  
“Well,” says Lucy, “the Flitterbies aren’t the kind of band who sells out stadiums. They’re not like, the Weird Sisters.”  
  
Cal makes a vomiting gesture. “I know. They’re better. And they’re not as overplayed. You don’t know how many blokes came up to me over the summer, asking if I heard the same exact Weird Sisters song—their most popular one—thinking they’re being ‘different.’ Yes, I’ve bloody heard it. I’m pretty sure even fetuses know it.”  
  
Lucy laughs with Cal, but afterwards, she gets quiet. Chewing her bottom lip, she asks, “What blokes?”  
  
“All of them.” Cal travelled with her family over the summer. They got back only last week, and while she could have gone and seen the Flitterbies while they were touring, she and Lucy agreed that they didn’t want to go without the other. Lucy notes the pins jangling on Cal’s breast pocket: the Italian flag, the German flag, the Egyptian flag. “The languages may differ, but they’re all connected by one single desire: to get in your trousers.”  
  
“Lovely—” Cal cuts her off with an abrupt hug. She smells like lavender soap and coconut oil. When Cal pulls away Lucy wishes she could smell both of those things all the time.  
  
Cal holds her look. “Are we really doing this, Luce?”  
  
Lucy is taken aback by the vulnerability in her face. “I . . . I guess so.”  
  
From the breast pocket with all the pins, Cal takes out her ticket. “Can we talk about how incredibly inconvenient it is to have a concert of the first day of school?”  
  
Lucy snorts. “Most of their fans have probably been out of Hogwarts for decades. I doubt they put much thought into it.”  
  
“I’ve been listening through their stuff all summer. I had one earbud in the whole time my mum and dad read off quote-unquote fun Wizarding facts from all the tourist maps.” Cal puffs out her chest and does an impression of who Lucy assumes is her father. “_Did you know that, in 1987, the Sphinx of Giza was enchanted to lick its paws—Calliope? Calliope Flint, are you even listening?!_  
  
Lucy cracks up. Cal is always able to do that to her: coax the kind of laughter that makes her face scrunch up, that makes her smile big enough to see her gums. It's horribly unattractive, Lucy thinks, but Cal told her she shouldn't feel self-conscious about something as innocent as laughing. 

They move into the living room. Lucy asks, “What’s the one song you hope is on their set list tonight?”  
  
“‘Where Did All the Thestrals Go?’ You know, thanks to you, I’m starting to change my mind about _Tea Leaves_. It’s such a different sound compared to their other albums—it’s softer and sadder. But it’s really quite amazing. Especially that song.”  
  
“I told you that album was great.”  
  
“You were right.” Then Cal closes her eyes. _“I’ll never see your face again, it haunts me so. No one comes around these days, I’m so alone. And I keep on thinking, Where did all the thestrals go?”_  
  
Lucy is always surprised by Cal’s singing. Even when she casually breaks into song, her voice is disarmingly beautiful: clear and gentle, entirely effortless. One doesn’t expect it, based on her speaking voice, which is usually tinged with irony. Lucy told Cal in their third year of school that she should consider joining the Frog Choir, that she’d probably get all the solos, but Cal disagreed. She’d said singing wasn’t her “thing,” and that she weirdly only felt comfortable doing it around Lucy anyway.  
  
_Why do you think that is?_ Lucy wishes she’d asked her at the time.  
  
“Where’s Francis?” Cal’s question brings Lucy back to the present.  
  
“He said he had to use the loo.”  
  
“He’s been in there for ages. I hope he hasn’t fallen in.”  
  
“We should check in on him.” Lucy leads as she and Cal ascend the stairs. At the end of the hallway, there’s a closed door from which the softest sniffles emanate.  
  
Cal loudly raps. “Francis? What is it?”  
  
“He said he had allergies,” says Lucy.  
  
The door opens. Francis’ eyes are red, his cheeks streaked with tears. “Aiden and I . . . broke up.” He immediately falls into Cal’s arms.  
  
“What happened?” Lucy rubs his back.  
  
“He just sent an owl this morning. Broke up with me _through a letter._”  
  
“What did he say?” says Cal.  
  
“Only said that he was getting bored, and that he didn’t we were compatible anymore, and that since it’s our last year, we should start to bloody ‘broaden our horizons.’”  
  
“He wants to shag other people,” Cal bluntly explains.  
  
Lucy gives her a look: _”Really?”_  
  
“What? If I’m being honest, he always struck me as a bit of a tosser, really.”  
  
“I hate that I’m crying over this.” Francis digs into his pocket to retrieve a balled-up tissue and blows his nose into it. “I guess . . . getting a letter is a bit more courteous than other methods. It was quite extensive.” He hands the tissue to Cal.  
  
Cal scrunches her face and quickly discards the tissue in a small wastebasket. “Well, ask yourself this: did you honestly see yourselves still dating after graduation?”  
  
“You’re not much for comfort, are you, Cal?” says Lucy.  
  
Francis sighs. "I guess . . . No, I didn’t. I mean, I _have_ noticed that we’ve been drifting apart lately. We barely talked over the summer.”  
  
Cal pets Francis’ head. “That’s why they call it the Seventh-Year Summer of Severance.”  
  
Lucy raises a brow. “Is that _really_ what it’s called?”  
  
“Yup. It’s a bloodbath for all Hogwarts relationships. Every year, it gets worse: more casualties, more tears, more chocolate frogs to subdue the pain.”  
  
“Because there are official estimates,” adds Lucy, sarcastic.  
  
“I guess I'm biased.” Cal shrugs. “I’ve never believed in love. Lust, yes. But love?” She shakes her head. Then to Francis, she says, “Come on, we've got a concert to go to. In the meantime, I know what’ll cheer you up.” Cal puts an arm over Francis’ shoulder and walks him out of the bathroom, down the hall. "Let's go, Luce."  
  
Lucy follows. She thinks how funny it is, to be in love with a girl who doesn’t even believe in it.  
  
  
  
**— 10:44am —**  
“We’re criminals!” Francis’ chin sits on the surface of a table in the Leaky Cauldron. He has let the whipped cream of his hot chocolate melt into a white, cloudy scum on the drink’s surface.  
  
“Hardly,” says Lucy, although deep inside, she agrees with Francis.  
  
“We’re bloody, fucking criminals!”  
  
“Right. They should give us with the Death potion.” Cal takes a swig of brackish-looking coffee, frowning at its taste. “Bet it’d taste better than this ditchwater.”  
  
“Do you want me to ask for a fresh brew?” Lucy offers.  
  
“No thanks." Cal pushes the coffee away from her, to the absolute edge of the table.   
  
Presently, the Leaky Cauldron has a small number of clientele. An older witch sneezes, turning a page in a book, and two bored wizards play a card game. Lucy imagines how she and her friends look from their perspectives: like unsupervised children. But apart from Francis, they’re legally adults. Maybe they think they’re Hogwarts graduates, just out for a cuppa. Or—and this is highly likely—they simply don’t care at all. 

Cal has complained multiple times about the Weird Sisters song that plays on a jukebox. “THIS IS THE ONE, LUCE,” she hisses under her breath. “THIS IS THE _ONE_ SONG THEY ALWAYS BROUGHT UP.”  
  
“This is Aiden’s favorite song,” Francis adds, his glum voice not much louder than a whisper.  
  
Lucy imagines her father in his office, happily imagining the conversation she’s supposedly having with Marion. Audrey's voice plays over the image: _“We’ve raised a good girl . . .”_  
  
“Guys, look.”  
  
Lucy perks at the feeling of Cal’s fingers brushing her hand. She follows her friend's gaze to the small clock above the bar, hanging over the head of a worker who appears no more content than Francis is, polishing and polishing the same spot on the counter. Lucy can’t read the time from this distance, squinting her eyes, but there’s no need: Cal says it, very quietly. “10:56am.”  
  
Even Francis stops his moping to watch the second hand revolve around the clock face.  
  
“In four minutes,” says Cal, “the Hogwarts Express’ll leave Platform 9 3/4.”  
  
10:58am... 10:59am... 11:00am.  
  
Lucy holds her breath.  
  
They all do.


End file.
